Thoughts on life, God and faith from a local church minister and teacher

Monday, March 3, 2014

Youth Suicide and the Pressure to Be "Perfect"

“Ring the bells that
still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything,
that’s how the light gets in…”--“Anthem”,
by Leonard Cohen

His name was Roee Grutman, and he was a 17 year old junior
in high school from Newton,
Massachusetts.On February 6th of this year, he
took his own life and thus became the third Newton high school student to commit suicide
since last October. I cannot imagine a worse nightmare for parents or a family
or peers or a community than a young person getting to a point in life where
they feel so down, so despondent, so trapped, and so bleak that the only way
they see out is death.

Always there is the lingering question of “why?” Much of the
time this has no clear or immediate answer.Suicide happens for a host of reasons: mental illness, life
circumstances, substance abuse, trauma. Suicide among the young is also a “hidden
in plain sight” public health epidemic across the United States. It is the second leading
cause of death among Americans ages 10 to 24. Every day in the U.S. 5,400
middle and high school young people attempt suicide. According to the National
Alliance on Mental Illness, “More teenagers and young adults die from suicide
than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia,
influenza and chronic lung disease combined.” There are no simple nor
obvious answers to the question of what moves a young person to take their own
life.

But in reading a recent Boston Globe article about
Roee and his life and death, it was these sentences which most caught my heart,
and then broke my heart.“[Roee’s]
family, who moved here 14 years ago from Israel, believes the stress of an
overwhelming course load and an American obsession with elite universities
contributed to his death, though they recognize there could have been
additional — still unknown — factors.In
the aftermath of the suicides, other parents in town have also begun to
question the culture of a high-achieving school community that routinely sends
numerous graduates to elite colleges.”Said his Mom, Galit Grutman, “I really didn’t know that it was not OK to
take five AP and honors classes. I blame myself for that.”

Is this overwhelming cultural pressure to succeed, to be “perfect”,
a contributing factor to youth suicide, as Roee’s family so poignantly and
hauntingly wonders? I really don’t know. But I do know if I had one message I
could directly say to the young people I work with as pastor and teacher, the
young people I love so fiercely as Uncle and Godfather and friend, it would be
that you do not have to be perfect in this life. Ever.

That your worth as a young person is already there, within
you, regardless of any external measurements of so called “success”.That you are already “perfect” in fact, in
your imperfection, your God made human goodness from the moment you came into
this world. You are good, great, amazing just as you are, first string, second
string, or bench warmer.You are good,
great, amazing, whether you get into Harvard or Holyoke Community College
or the military. You are good, great, amazing not because of SAT scores or your
number of Facebook friends or your outward appearance, but because God shaped
you into a child of God.Nothing else
really matters than this one undeniable truth and fact.

Roee’s death and the deaths of his two other Newton
classmates-- Karen Douglas, 18, and Katie Stack, 15—have made me examine much more
critically all the ways in which our over achieving world can so insidiously,
temptingly try to convince people of all ages, that we really only matter if we
are forever striving for perfection, to get ahead, to be “the best”. Perfect
weight. Perfect looks. Perfect grades.Perfect careers.A perfect
life.

Turn on the TV, or read a magazine with its glossy ads or
watch a movie with its oh so gorgeous actors and actresses and pay attention to
the impossible standards of success we far too often worship as a people.But the truth? All of us are “cracked”,
filled with imperfections, traits and temperaments and personalities and quirks
that make us who we are.Already good.
Already whole. Already worthy of love, no matter what the world might say or
depict as “perfect”.

So this day I hope we can all say a prayer for the youth in
our lives and then go beyond prayer and let them know every single day, just
how amazing they already are and how much we love them, perfection be
damned.